13 Year Old Boy Shot Outside Bowie, Md. Middle School, Not Known if Sniper Related

CNN Breaking news ^ | 07 OCT 02 | DCBryan1

[DCBryan1]

13 year old boy shot infront of school. Police scanners on!

[r9etb]

He may well have already scouted these places before he started. Now that he's started, he goes to the place, sets up and shoots.

Disagree. He only needs to be able to identify the right kind of place, and he needs only to stop at the ones he spots as he drives around. If you've got an idea of what would work, it would be easy to spot likely targets.

OTOH, there are many fewer victims now than when this first started. Perhaps he did carefully plan the first spate, and now he's doing them as soon as he can put together another shot. Either that, or he's being more careful to avoid getting caught, which doesn't necesarily fit a nutjob profile.

[Bella]

Definitely "planned" these shootings, plus they're NOT stupid to say the least..what was the "code" pattern for the attacks on 911??

[mhking]

Schools have big decisions to make re tomorrow; should be easier for parents - better safe than sorry.

I'm sure we'll hear from my brother-in-law and crew tonight (they're in Montgomery Co.) as far as my nephews are concerned.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Or "they".

My theory: they have a car retrofited for this purpose or some other such arrangement to hide the shooter, and the driver just waits for the report and then flees the scene after the one (usually on-target) single shot.....

[cake_crumb]

"An amateur who doesn't know how to compensate his point of aim for the glass will very likely blow the shot unless he gets lucky"

Yep, as the shooter in this incident may have been...IF the hit on the glass represents one of two shots. On a nice day, with clean glass, a display window at a distance can create a reflection which not only seems solid, it also appears to have depth.

[aristeides]

Glenspending is a joke.

[lizma]

I'm really thinking about it.
During afternoon pick up today at the school, all the male teachers and some of the guy parents stood outside the building till all the kids were gone. Getting sorta spooky out here.

[Catspaw]

He also seems to be picking places with or near parking lots--the only exception is the man mowing the lawn, but I don't know if there was a parking lot nearby. It'd be a place to sit and scope the place before the shootings, even long before the shootings.

I have a feeling that he has a list of possibilities and picks a place to shoot depending on what's the most available to him at that particular day and time. It's like a crime of opportunity with some preplanning.

[relee]

It's nice weather today so a motorcycle would not be out of place.

[AmericanInTokyo]

So there is a Governor of Maryland, while this uneasiness and panic spreads? Wonder if he's out on a sailboat or something..... Must be a 'dem.

[epow]

Second the use of a .223 round has one significant advantage to a novice shooter. It has very little recoil. It makes a lot of noise but does not have much bite.

Agreed that the .223 could be more easily handled by a novice, but not the part about it not having much bite. Police SWAT team stats show that the 5.56 has almost instantly killed or incapacitated 98 out of every 100 people hit in a vital area. I also knew some fellows who came back from Vietnam with a lot of respect for the damamge it could do the human body.

In TX the .223 with 60-70 grain soft points (NOT hollow points) is fast becoming a popular deer cartridge. I know of several local boys around here who have killed a good number of buck deer with one shot from a .223, and they say it drops them just as quickly as the mid-size bores do. I haven't shot anything but paper with a .223, but using Wolf Russian FMC ammo it doesn't take long to make splinters out of the sourwood logs I use for a backstop. You don't have to tear the body of either a man or a deer to pieces in order to kill him. A well designed .22 cal bullet with enough weight to give it high cross-sectional density delivered in the right place does the job quite well.

I know that discussing things like this may seem awfully callous to some people when 7 innocent people have just been shot with the same type bullets. But the subject of ballistics has been pretty thoroughly discussed on this thread, and you and I didn't start the discussion.

[Ryzaroo]

My kids go to elem. school in Baltimore County right by the Howard County line. I went to pick them up from school today and normally we are allowed in the parking lot to park....well today they sealed off the parking lot and forced all the parents to park alongside the street. Which meant instead of a 10 second walk to the car after getting my kindergartner ...I had to park a good 3 minute walk away. I'm sure they did it for safety reasons but I felt even more UNSAFE walking ( extremely fast) that whole distance....not to mention all the woods nearby. I got back to the car and just bolted home. Tomorrow they were supposed to go on a field trip to a pumpkin patch...this is just beyond horrible.

[aristeides]

Yes, Glenspending is a DemocRAT, and he's also a joke, even to a lot of the other RATs.

[Dog]

I think they are going for targets of opportunity...

He seems to be comfortable shooting in the morning hours .

I would guess he picks an area ....scouts out a shooting location...does a dry run.

He could have been in place in some of these shootings hours before a victim even shows up..

[cyphergirl]

I know that there is a big TMR (No-fly zone) around Camp David up in Frederick County. My husband and I own a Cessna 172... it's located at the Frederick airport. We're always being REALLY careful when flying around that area, he's seen more than one person get a private "escort" back to the runway. ;)

[Catspaw]

You be VERY careful. VERY VERY careful.

[Jrabbit]

I was confused by the 1st reports saying the entrance wound was as large as a coffee cup but the surgeon describing a small hole. How far away would the shooter have to be for there not to be an exit wound or does the distance not matter?

[VRWC_minion]

Maybe number 7 represents the sun.

[aristeides]

I'm sure they did it for safety reasons but I felt even more UNSAFE walking ( extremely fast) that whole distance

For as long as these guys are active, I suspect it's a lot safer to run than to walk any distance one has to cover out of doors.

[r9etb]

Agreed that the .223 could be more easily handled by a novice, but not the part about it not having much bite.

If we're talking about a novice, it may be expecting too much for him to have selected a .223 for any reason other than convenience.

E.g., it's more likely that it's simply what he already owned, or could easily get his hands on, or could afford.